The Swallows of Kabul: A Novel [Hardcover]

Yasmina Khadra's sense of Kabul is brutal and unrelenting. The descriptions of the arid weather, the relentless dust, and the powerful force of the scorching sun make one grateful to be in the shade. He successfully brought to life the rugged and dry landscape of Afghanistan and the city of Kabul high in the mountains. In addition to the physical descriptions of the land, Khadra's focus on the plight of the women and men are superb and insightful. He adequately describes the dire affect that Taliban rule had on the moral consciences of ordinary individuals. While the main characters are male, I believe the main focus is the plight of Mohsen and Atiq's wives under harsh religious rule that places no value on the feminine gender. The swallows in the title are a euphemism for the faded blue and golden yellow burqas that erase all individual characteristics of women and renders them objects. They are the sparrows of Kabul, and the spirit of this novel. Recommended.

Grown used to frequent executions under the Taliban, Mohsen Ramat's conscience no longer bothers him. The few women on the streets at any given time are specters, existing at the fringes of the crowd. Ramat and his wife have lost everything, their comfortable home and lifestyle, their freedom to wander through a marketplace that no longer exists. He wanders the city, while Zunaira stays inside, rather than endure the violence of the streets. Seduced by earlier, happy days, she agrees to walk with her husband. Accosted by the Taliban while on their walk, Zunaira is humiliated beyond endurance, her shame more painful because she understands the enormity of her loss.

After the incident, Zunaira looks upon her young husband as the enemy, those who roam the streets with whips, attacking passersby indiscriminately. Mohsen is, like them, a man. Zunaira refuses to remove her burqa inside their house, although her husband begs her, "Your face is the only sun I have left." Implacable, Zunaira cannot forgive. When he tries to remove the burqa, she resists and they struggle. Tragedy ensues and Zunaira's fate is sealed by the dictates of the land.

Atiq Shaukat, the jailer in charge of guarding prisoners before execution, nurses his own discontent under the deadening rule of the Taliban. Atiq drifts between his dingy office and home. The boredom of his daily life leeches out all feeling and memory, all desire. When Zunaira is brought into the prison, Atiq falls in love. Atiq is so warped by unhappiness that he doesn't realize the agony he is experiencing is love. It falls to his ailing wife to explain the meaning of his strange new emotion.

The Swallows of Kabul is a scathing indictment of a world turned to stone, where life has become uninhabitable. With women's compassion extracted from their society, men's hearts have hardened, left with only despair, arrogance and religious extremism. This small book marks a rapid descent from discontent into hell. Like the missing swallows, the bearers of hope are sentenced to endless days of mourning, covered in colors of "fever and fear". (The author, Mohamed Moulessehoul, an Algerian army officer, used a pseudonym to avoid the oversight of his manuscript by the military censors.) Luan Gaines/2004.